Dr Subodh Verma is an internationally renowned cardiac surgeon-scientist and Professor at the University of Toronto. He is the current Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery, having previously served as the Canada Research Chair in Atherosclerosis (2007-2017). Dr Verma is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences, one of the highest national honours that recognizes scholars for their promotion of health science. Dr Verma was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Clinical Medicine in 2022 and 2023. He was bestowed the University of Calgary Cumming School Medicine Alumnus of Distinction Award for Research in 2023 and in 2021, he was awarded the University of Toronto Lister Prize in Surgery in recognition of his outstanding and continuing productivity of international stature. For his work on the relationship between inflammation and atherosclerosis, he was named the recipient of the Howard Morgan Award for Distinguished Achievements in Cardiovascular Research from the International Academy of Cardiovascular Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Gold Medal in Surgery. Dr Verma is an appointee of the American Association of Thoracic Surgeons (AATS) and member of the Royal Society of Canada College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Dr Verma’s over 700 peer-reviewed publications have earned him a Google Scholar h-index of 126 with over 80,000 citations. He has published extensively in highly impactful journals like the NEJM, Lancet, Nature, Circulation, European Heart Journal and JACC. He is Section Editor of Current Opinion in Cardiology a Guest Editor of Circulation and JACC. Dr Verma is an active contributor to Canadian clinical practice guidelines and has co-authored recommendations for atrial fibrillation, antiplatelet therapy, cardiorenal protection, diabetes, heart failure, and peripheral artery disease; he was also a member of the 2018 AATS consensus guidelines committee on bicuspid aortic valve-related aortopathy. Dr Verma is the current Scientific Program Committee Chair for the Canadian Society of Cardiac Surgeons and has served in various capacities on the American Heart Association (AHA) Council on Cardiovascular Surgery and Anesthesia since 2008.
Dr Verma had/has leadership roles in multiple contemporary global heart failure and cardiometabolic disease trials – several of which have persuaded guideline writing committees to recommend paradigm changes in how individuals who live with heart failure should be managed. He founded the CardioLink platform at St Michael’s Hospital that united cardiac surgeons from across Canada to conduct robust clinical trials to better inform on surgical decision-making pathways. CardioLink has since expanded its scope to include cardiometabolic studies and boasts over 30 peer-reviewed papers since its inception in 2015 with several invited as late breakers at the AHA and ESC conferences.
Dr Verma leads a dynamic pre-clinical and translational research team that leverages pre-clinical disease models and clinical trial-derived data to identify novel mediators of cardiometabolic diseases. Currently, the focus of this research arm is centred around modulating vascular regenerative cell exhaustion to alleviate cardiometabolic risk as well as evaluating the contribution of regenerative cell exhaustion to ethnic and racial differences in cardiometabolic risk. Dr Verma holds 2 United States patents, and his research program is supported by national peer-reviewed grants as well as funds from industry for investigator-initiated studies.